Farsi.com sells for $75,000 through domain brokerage.

An entire language has been sold for $75,000. Well, an entire language as a domain name. Sedo has brokered the sale of Farsi.com for $75,000. The domain was first registered in 1995. As of now, it’s not clear who the buyer is.

Although Farsi.com will certainly grab the headlines, it wasn’t Sedo’s top sale this past week. Brax.com topped the charts at $80,000. Other notable .com domain sales include udk.com for 28,600 EUR, hugh.com for $25,000 and frisky.com for 20,000.

Sedo sold the German ccTLD domain Forums.de for 25,000 EUR. In an interesting sale for the .eu ccTLD, Cool.eu sold for 10,000 EUR.

As a follow up to Sedo’s sales report a couple weeks ago in which both Payment.com and Payments.com sold, the domains payment.co.uk and payments.co.uk sold for 20,000 GBP and 10,000 GBP respectively. Someone is clearly getting ready to launch a business or service around the domain. The whois for both .co.uk domains shows Startive Capital Pty Ltd, an Australian company, but without historical records it’s unclear if that’s the seller or buyer. The plural version forwards to Payments.com.

Here’s a look at other top sales this week at Sedo:

.COM

juegosfun.com 12,000 EUR
e-market.com 11,500 USD
chatbox.com 11,500 USD
cloudcontainer.com 10,000 USD
denpasar.com 10,000 USD
chanti.com 10,000 USD
jiz.com 8,100 USD
xhostar.com 7,600 USD
archivecity.com 7,500 USD
pornographyaddiction.com 7,500 USD
meinname.com 6,500 EUR
cashbackcard.com 6,000 USD
guiafacil.com 6,000 EUR
hotspark.com 5,500 USD
qnd.com 4,800 USD

ccTLDs
golfplatz.de 22,000 EUR
photobox.se 7,500 EUR
etsy.de 7,500 EUR
june.fr 6,000 EUR
travesti.es 6,000 EUR
june.tv 5,500 USD
meine-domain.de 5,500 EUR

Other
cgm.net 12,000 USD
modellbau.net 6,000 EUR
inf.net 3,950 USD
finanzierung.info 3,500 EUR Financing in German

Popular conference making its return.

Building on the success (and fun) of its first year, Domainer Mardi Gras is making a return in 2010. The event will be held at the New Orleans Marriott February 11th – 13th, 2010. Fat Tuesday is February 16.

The event is now an independent event. Parked will be a headline sponsor.

Compared to last year, you’ll spot two key differences off the top: the hotel is closer to the action and the entire event is cheaper.

Although last year’s event at the Westin was in a good location, you can’t get much closer to the revelry than the Marriott on Canal Street.

Second, the entire event will be lighter on the pocket book. Room rates are only $179 and early bird admission to the conference is $795. If you stay at the conference hotel you save $300 off admission, so early bird admission is only $495. This makes it the most affordable domain conference on the schedule.

Registration is now open at DomainerMardiGras.com.

Expired domain names show disconnect between corporate functions.

Corporation Service Company (CSC), a brand protection company, released a study today about the expenses incurred by brand holders to get domain names through UDRP. The study suggests companies have spent $220 million getting domains back through UDRP, and that it would have only cost $1.1 million had they proactively registered the domains.

But what I found more interesting is how many domains won through UDRP have been allowed to expire:

Of the domain names that were won and handed back to the brand owner, almost 4,000 have been subsequently lapsed and are now available for registration. Also, an additional 3,000 domain names were lapsed after they were won and then re-registered – in some cases, by third parties. In fact, CSC found that several companies have disputed the same domain name up to three times because they continued to allow it to lapse.

This shows a major disconnect at companies between three groups:

1. Trademark attorneys that feel they need to get every possible trademark domain name.
2. Brand managers who don’t know what to do with the domains when they get them.
3. Corporate domain managers who are are reactive instead of proactive. Often times they don’t even work in conjunction with the trademark attorneys.

I’ve looked through portfolios of Fortune 500 companies and found that a good portion of their domains don’t resolve. Others are merely forwarded to the company’s home page when they should direct to a specific page on the web site. CSC’s statistics quantify this mismanagement.

ICANN working group asks for input on current domain expiration practices.

The recently launched Post-Expiration Domain Name Recovery Working Group is seeking public input on domain expiration policies. Specifically, the working group is charged with answering these questions:

1. Whether adequate opportunity exists for registrants to redeem their expired domain names;
2. Whether expiration-related provisions in typical registration agreements are clear and conspicuous enough;
3. Whether adequate notice exists to alert registrants of upcoming expirations;
4. Whether additional measures need to be implemented to indicate that once a domain name enters the Auto-Renew Grace Period, it has expired (e.g., hold status, a notice on the site with a link to information on how to renew, or other options to be determined);
5. Whether to allow the transfer of a domain name during the Redemption Grace Period (RGP).

Public comments may be submitted and reviewed on ICANN’s web site.

The group is already having spirited discussions on its mailing list, including representatives of GoDaddy and Oversee.net.

Arbitrator faults non-profit for harassing domain owner.

Palo Alto-based non-profit Urban Logic, Inc. has been found guilty of reverse domain name hijacking in a domain dispute at World Intellectual Property Organization.

The non-profit uses UrbanLogic.org. But, as you might expect, a number of people looking for the non-profit or sending an email actually type in UrbanLogic.com.

UrbanLogic.com is owned by Peter Holland, who ran a consulting business at the domain earlier this decade. When he received emails meant for UrbanLogic.org, he kindly forwarded them to the non-profit. But then six years later, things took a turn for the worse and became contentious.

The panel found in favor of the respondent on two key grounds. First, Holland used the domain for many years for a non-competitive business. Second, Urban Logic, Inc. didn’t get a federal trademark registration for its name until 2007 and it is unlikely Holland knew about it prior to registering the domain name.

WIPO arbitrator Richard G. Lyon found these two major flaws to be obvious, and faulted both the non-profit and its lawyers Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP for filing a complaint primarily to harass the domain owner. Lyon wrote:

The fact remains, however, that Respondent has been put to considerable expense, of his own time and paying outside counsel, to defend this proceeding – a proceeding that the Panel has found to be groundless on the face of the Complaint. Disappointment at Respondent’s refusal to transfer the disputed domain name or fear or anger generated by Respondent’s fighting words cannot elide these consequences. Complainant’s counsel and Complainant’s principal (a lawyer himself) should have expected or at least not been surprised by some hyperbole from Respondent, another lawyer, in an exchange in a contentious matter. Lawyers are expected to divorce emotion from their professional judgment. The certification required by paragraph 3(b)(xiv) of the Rules demands no less.

Whatever offense Complainant or its counsel may have taken from Respondent’s fighting words simply does not excuse the filing of the Complaint on the facts as set out in the Complaint. The Panel finds that this was a proceeding “brought primarily to harass the domain-name holder” (Rules, paragraph 15(e)) in an attempt at reverse domain name highjacking.

Read the decision here.